Category Archives: Photos

We take a two-hour taxi to Viñales with a couple from New Zealand. We talk about politics nearly the whole time. Not necessarily by choice, but because when you’re an American traveling abroad and your country has just elected a guy that the rest of the world considers to be a dangerous lunatic, specifically the kind of dangerous lunatic that might plunge them into war with China, they want answers. We compare our tax rates and they demand why ours are so high given that we get so much less from what we pay. For what we pay, they get health care and a host of other social services. “But oh, yeah, war,” they remember “war is expensive.”

We get to Viñales and wander the streets, taking photos of farmers with teams of horses and oxen, and later, the view of the valley. It is a good place for photos if you’re into that kind of thing.

The beauty of man, of woman; child
Each is perfect and of perfect form
Each delightful to the soul, the mind, the heart
The strong enduring curves of women, the hard and graceful lines of men,
the determination of childhood, reaching toward man and woman with arms outstretched.
They are my kindred, my kin, my sisters, brothers, sons and daughters.
I love each: the tanned skin of my female friend as she lies sprawled in the shade, slick with sweat; the white emerging confidence of a man I know; the blond-headed children running dappled through the woods.
It is impossible to enjoy masculine, feminine, parenthood, until you have seen the perfection of each person. Each is wondrous, each kind wondrous. Knowing this makes the self wondrous. I, too, am part of this gathering, brave and full of admiration. I have nothing to hide, nothing to prove. I am none, all, and more myself than ever.

I dace barefoot with this assembled tribe in a trampled-down clearing in the forest, sun sinking, disappearing. The day is night, we are night, swaying like darkness now, trees looming overhead and summer heat lingering in the grasses. Children, men and women, we dance and dance, fueled by the flesh of the animal we have consumed together.

I decide I’m going to Shanghai Fashion Week to try to get them to photograph me for my rad street style.

From what I observed yesterday after I stumbled into the heart of Shanghai Fashion Week totally by accident, people like to take photos of you if you’re dressed in something crazy. Like a mink coat with Tibetan shell decoration and a Peter Pan hat with insane feathers. Or a tulle skirt and baseball cap. Or shorts with really tall red socks. Normally this is a game I could play with serious creativity, but since all of my choices are conference garb — the most sedate clothing I own — I settle for wearing pulling my turquoise scarf up over my head and asking someone to take a photo of me. The thing is, once one person takes a photo of you, two or three other people swarm over and start clicking away because clearly you’re important. So here I am, striking a pose in front of the VIP fashion show entrance, a scarf my Dad bought me in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, flipped over myself at a weird angle. And this guy is saying “so cool, so cool,” turning his camera sideways like I’m some kind of trendsetter, when clearly what I look like is idiotic.

I walk away thinking my niece Chloe would be really good at Fashion Week due to her natural four-year-old street wear choices. And basically that’s fashion: playing dress-up and acting like a grownup because now you can color your makeup in the lines.

If you rent a motorcycle, you can find the less touristy spots in Krabi, such as the network of caves near Ao Leuk marked poorly, if at all. The nicest cave near Ao Leuk is Suanoi Cave, and it is not easy to find. It isn’t the largest, or the most visited, but it is cooler by maybe 20 degrees than the surrounding sunny jungle — the reason being that it holds a 100-meter-deep aquifer, and the breeze blowing across the water makes everything fresh and blissful.

It is both a local swimming hole and a source of local household water — there’s a pump shuttling it away to prove it. Given the amount of trash littering the water’s edge, the presence of ducks, monkeys and wading fishermen, I immediately think better of brushing my teeth with local tap water. Bottled water only from now on.

You can explore this cave without a headlamp thanks to the light pouring in above the aquifer, which is not true of many of the other caves in the region.

Nearby Phech Cave is good for exploration in the darkness, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Often when I travel, I end up at the spots where a hundred or so other foreigners have congregated also — in fact, this seems nearly impossible to avoid, unless you stick to the ugly parts of town. So I end up trying to find the beauty in the tourists themselves, in the postcards, in the photos that have been taken several million times already.

FX Factory, a former factory space near the Alcântara tram stop in the south of Lisbon, has been turned into an interesting hipster-esque scene with an industrial street-art feel. I say “hipster-esque,” because although I did spot some hipsters there, flannel and everything, and although the entire city of Lisbon seems like something hipsters would swoon over, it didn’t have the pretentious vibe I associate with hipsters. In fact, it seems not many people even know about this place yet. I arrived on a crowded evening, an “open” day, when the bars and the street markets were open until midnight, and it was pleasantly full but not crazy. It was one of the coolest places I’ve ever been. The next day I went back with my camera and it was relatively abandoned, possibly due to the rain.

The gem of LX Factory is Ler Devagar (meaning “read slowly” in Portuguese), a print shop-turned-bookstore and cafe sporting giant walls of books and mechanical biker cutouts pulled along on strings.

My first few days in Lisbon, I stayed in Cruz Quebrada because my CouchSurfing host lived there. Formerly a home to heroin addicts, it now primarily provides residential housing for mainstreamers. The tram station is directly next to the water — not the ocean, but still technically the Tagus River. The ocean is a couple of tram stops down.

I’m in downtown Lisbon, wandering with my camera, taking photos in Restauradores and Rossio, the beautiful light and the perfect cobblestones in contrasting colors. I’m starting to get hungry, and I spot some roasted chestnuts and slow down to get some. A wizened man with two missing front teeth falls into step with me and shows me cellophane-wrapped weed flourettes behind his hand. “Marijuana?” he asks “good price, good price.”

“No,” I say, waving it away, but I stop because I want the chestnuts.

“It’s legal, ten grams,” the man tells me eagerly.

“No, no,” I say, still shooing at him.

“You want cocaine?” he queries. I bust out laughing at this: I’ve literally never been offered cocaine before. “It’s legal in Portugal,” he tells me, encouraged. I pause: this is actually true; sort of, or at least you won’t get in trouble if you’re caught with a small amount of it. According to the locals, Portugal significantly cut down on its junkie population by decriminalizing drugs and treating junkies like they were sick.

“No,” I say, shaking my head.

“You have five euros for me?” he asks.

“No, no, I don’t want it,” I persist. But he corrects me: he’s not asking me to buy anything, he just wants me to give him money.

“No,” I tell him. I’m beginning to feel like a broken record. Then he says something that contains both Portuguese and English. I make a face and say I don’t understand.

He leans towards my ear. “Sssssssexxxxx?” he enunciates in question form. I stare at him, his gap-toothed grin, his dirty gray stubble, his upraised hand still flaunting the weed, trying to figure out if he’s offering his services for purchase or for free, and either way I shoo at him again, “no, no,” laughing a bit and rolling my eyes because I’m not sure what else to do. Then I have the great idea of pulling out my camera, and he disappears.

I think of better comebacks, comebacks designed to let him know how creepy he is. I remember that only yesterday, I was researching the philosophy of pick-up artist Julien Blanc, where Blanc claimed that when he said something outrageous to women he didn’t know, none of them were offended. He said on the contrary, many of them would bust out laughing at what he’d say. And I realized those women were probably actually highly offended and uncomfortable, and were just reacting in the safest way possible: by laughing it off, by making a joke out of it.

Pick-up artists of the world, take note. Even toothless drug dealer-beggars have the guts to ask strange women outrageous questions. And even in those circumstances, the women laugh. It’s not intended as encouragement, and it’s certainly not intended as a compliment.

It’s intended to let you know how absurd you are, camouflaged so you don’t get too mad and start breaking things.